I'm the reason people hate Child of Alara

Commander / EDH Competitive Control Lands Multiplayer Scapeshift Theme/Gimmick

Cowmmunist

Land (38)

• 1x Azorius Guildgate
• 1x Baldur's Gate
• 1x Basilisk Gate
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Boros Guildgate
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1x Diamond Valley
• 1x Dimir Guildgate
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 2x Forest
• 1x Golgari Guildgate
• 1x Grim Backwoods
• 1x Gruul Guildgate
• 1x High Market
• 2x Island
• 1x Izzet Guildgate
• 1x Maze's End
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Orzhov Guildgate
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 2x Plains
• 1x Rakdos Guildgate
• 1x Selesnya Guildgate
• 1x Simic Guildgate
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Disruption (11)

• 1x Abjure
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Dissipate
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Void Shatter
• 1x Voidslime

Combo (4)

• 1x Cataclysm
• 1x Maze's End
• 1x Scapeshift *f-pp*
• 1x Splendid Reclamation

Ramp (16)

• 1x Circuitous Route
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Explore the Underdark
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Hour of Promise
• 1x Navigation Orb
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Reap and Sow
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Search for Tomorrow
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Tempt with Discovery
• 1x Wargate

Recursion (13)

• 1x Breath of Life
• 1x Corpse Dance
• 1x Gift of Immortality
• 1x Journey to Eternity  ^Flip
• 1x Life / Death
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Loyal Retainers
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Rescue from the Underworld
• 1x Stitch Together
• 1x Unburial Rites
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold

Tutor (12)

• 1x Bring to Light
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Hour of Promise
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Maze's End
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Reap and Sow
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Wargate

Card Advantage (7)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Grim Backwoods
• 1x Life's Legacy
• 1x Momentous Fall
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Village Rites

Commander (1)

Utility (14)

• 1x Agent of Erebos
• 1x Archaeomancer
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Izzet Chronarch
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Mnemonic Wall
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Xenagos, God of Revels

Sac Outlet (12)

• 1x Abjure
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Diamond Valley
• 1x Grim Backwoods
• 1x High Market
• 1x Life's Legacy
• 1x Momentous Fall
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Rescue from the Underworld
• 1x Village Rites
• 1x Worthy Cause

Removal (8)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Cataclysm
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Reap and Sow
• 1x Utter End

WinCon (3)

• 1x Basilisk Gate
• 1x Maze's End
• 1x Xenagos, God of Revels

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Maybeboard

Land (4)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Beacon

Removal (1)

• 1x Assassin's Trophy

Card advantage (1)

• 1x Altar's Reap

Utility (4)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Beacon

Sac outlet (1)

• 1x Altar's Reap

Disruption (1)

• 1x Spell Shrivel

Ramp (1)

• 1x Harrow

WinCon (1)

• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

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{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}{W}{U}{B}{R}{G}

Hello! and welcome to the reason I don't have any friends, and the reason everyone I know hates Child of Alara

Introduction

So I had come across this deck How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.. for $99, and since I had all the cards for it already I decided built it and start running it in my playgroup. But the more I played it the more I found myself wanting to increase the power level of the deck, and so here we are. The deck primarily controls the board state with Child of Alara through sacrifice effects (exclusively at instant speed!), and then we try to ramp out all our gates so we can go for the Maze's End win condition. I have been playing this deck now for many years and over time I've gotten significantly more consistent at running it, and I have been tweaking it little by little here and there to keep it current with my playgroup, and make sure people know their permanents are not safe.

Deck building Philosophy

This is going to be a brief overview of one of the core philosophies I keep in mind when building any deck I play, or when helping other's build their decks. This is none other than the 8x8 Theory. I won't go too in depth here because there's not much to the idea and is already explained on the 8x8 blog, but if you're lazy like me it's simply this: pick 8 things you want your deck to do, like card draw, removal, ramp, and maybe sac outlets etc. Then choose 8 cards for each of your 8 categories (for those counting that's 64), and finally throw in a good selection of 35 lands and BINGPOT! You now have a generally consistent deck with all the effects you want/need!

I personally start with the 8x8 when I start a deck from scratch because choosing 99 cards is kind of tough for my ADHD brain to focus on. So splitting it up really helps me, and if you really want to get into the math involved as to why this is good enough to take into account when building a deck you can use a Hypergeometric population calculator to see that if you start with 99 cards in a population (your deck), set your sample size (your starting hand) to 7, and if you have 8 successes (1 of your 8x8 categories) you have a 45.6% chance of having 1 or more of those cards in your opening hand.

I would like to wrap up this section by stating that I am not associated with the 8x8 theory and I am not a mathematician, and I use the 8x8 as a starting point. A set of guidlines, and not a set of rules. But these tools help me and I have even set custom categories in the decklist so you can see all that the deck tries to accomplish, and which cards I think fit that category. Some cards can do more than one thing, and that's great. You might have noticed I run light on removal in the 99, and that's because generally things just blow up from child dying all the time anyways. This deck relies heavily on being able to out-ramp your opponents to gain advantage while also progressing towards our win condition. And so with essentially 16 ramp spells in the deck your odds of starting with at least 1 in your opening hand is 72.1% (not bad).

General Game plan

As with most decks, you're gonna want some lands in your opening hand. But this is a 5 color deck, so almost always you're going to be looking for a source to green mana to cast a ramp spell, or perhaps enough mana to cast one of our colorless ramp choices like Sad Robot, Navigation Orb, or Expedition Map so we can start building up our colors to cast Child.

If our colors are looking fine, you're going to want to start looking for a sac outlet, and preferably one that is present on our lands as we can use it repeatedly. However, if you're getting afraid of the board state don't feel bad resetting the board state with a spell, and preferably with a draw spell to refill our hand. Most of our spells have sacrifice as an additional cost, which leaves our opponents no opportunity to respond to us sacrificing Child, and in turn tends to keep our spells rather cheap since normally giving up a creature for a spell is considered a downside. But for us all of our spells tend to also say "destroy all nonland permanents, they cannot be regenerated"

Once you feel stabilized you have 2 routes to winning the game that you can take:

1) If we can get 10 different gates out we can win with a Maze's End activation. This can be done very efficiently with Scapeshift. If you have 9 other lands in play you can just tap all your lands to fill your mana pool, sacrifice however many lands you need to get at least 9 gates (Maze's end can grab the 10th), and then spend 3 of your mana from your mana pool for the Maze's End activation.

2) Commander damage is one of my favorite ways to win, and we have 2 ways to boost Childs strength. We can get out Xenagos, God of Revels and swing twice at each opponent. Child is a 6/6 with trample for only 5 mana, and with Xenagos' beginning of combat trigger it gives Child haste and turns them into a 12/12. Then it is just a matter of swinging with Child. The other source costs a little bit of mana, but with a surplus of that you can use Basilisk Gate to really cause some damage. In the deck there are 12 gates, so by itself Basilisk Gate can make Child an 18/18 with trample. if you get Xenagos out at the same time you can hit a max p/t of 36/36. It's pretty sweet.

Important Game Rules

704.6d In a Commander game, if a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that object was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone. See rule 903, “Commander.”

903.9a If a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that object was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone. This is a state-based action. See rule 704.

903.9b If a commander would be put into its owner’s hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5.

The gist of these rulings is that prior to June 7, 2020 we were able to choose whether or not to send Child to the graveyard and blow up the board, or to the command zone, and not blow up the board. Now with the above rulings anytime Child dies from play, the death trigger will blow up the board regardless of where you send it. It now always triggers. This is really important to keep in mind when playing, and if you're like me you sometimes forget because the ruling is still so recent.

So now you know a little bit more about the deck and some of the card choices, but if you scroll through some of the comments you can find some more questions and answers from me about different things. If you find you have a new/more contemporary question or recommendation please drop a comment and let's talk about it! Make sure you include cuts with your suggestions! I am always open to new ideas and increasing my Knowledge Pool.

Top Ranked	Achieved #25 position overall 7 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH 2 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 months
Splash colors	WR
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 39 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 22 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.00
Tokens	Dungeon: Undercity, Skeleton 4/1 B, The Initiative, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	EDH (No friends), All color, Good EDH Decks, Interesting Commander Decks, Cool Decks, EDH Decks Favorited, decks i like, Folder 1, Cool Decks, definitely